Entries tagged with politics

Yeah, okay, I can't keep my fat mouth shut. But there's so little in the blogosphere that I've seen in defense of Hillary and her candidacy -- I've joked that this must be what being a republican on LJ must feel like. So anyway, I can't complain about that and not do anything about it, but I will try my damndest to keep this brief and as uninflammatory as possible.

This is in response to txvoodoo's recent post about racism and sexism, and, before I start -- Lisa, I have nothing but the greatest respect for you, and I am all ABOUT people on LJ and everywhere expressing their opinions. What's more I'm glad that people are responding (80 comments and counting) and opening up discussion.

I voted this morning, for Hillary Clinton. Don't know the California results yet because of intervening circumstances, namely:

My grandfather absolutely loves Hillary Clinton.

He died about an hour ago.

My mom and my aunt were with him, and as he had stopped eating or drinking three days ago and gone into a coma earlier today it was not unexpected; he was 96 and had been in a nursing home for the last couple years slowly deteriorating. But he was a sweet, adorable, wonderful man, who wrote poetry and flirted with the nurses, and we're gonna miss him.

My sister in SF had planned to vote for Obama, but a few days ago she decided to cast her vote for Clinton because Pop couldn't vote, out there in the nursing home. Lizzie had just finished voting tonight when she got the call from my dad that Poppa had died. Which meant that as she was casting her vote in California, he was slipping away in Massachusetts, and that she gave him, you know, one last chance to have a voice, to have an impact on the future, to express himself one last time. Kind of amazing.

Gonna post this and then check the California results, because in a couple hours or a week or a month or whenever I reread this entry I'll already know who has the Democratic nomination, so for now I just want this to be the post that I made the day we voted for Hillary Clinton, which was the day Poppa died.

1. WBC homework, times four. Functional slacker. (For Richard Linklater's "Slacker," see 'slacker (disambiguation)'). I'm on chapter headings and battle scenes, over here; character misbehaviour and want and need. This is USEFUL homework; if only I were a less disambiguous slacker.

2. The story where Ronon is an 18-year-old lazy-ass wisecracker in military school.3. The story where Rodney is put on a forced exercise regiment and is super embarassed and doesn't tell anyone until John starts noticing Rodney's getting all cut and svelte, and Rodney's like, "it's probably a tapeworm, don't worry about it!"4. The BUGMASTER.

I have interviews this week and freelance gigs already lined up. I need to COBRA my insurance and pay rent and I have six bucks in my pocket and I feel FREEEEEEE. And for the first time in months, months, I found runpunkrun and we met on a tropical internet isle and clung to each other out of love and separation anxiety. And so I'll do this meme because she told me to and PLUS it's FUN. Do me, will ya? Do me do me do me!

A-- pick out a line or two from one of my stories (my fic LJ; my vaguely outdated fic site)B-- I will respond with which story I think it's from.C-- an LJ icon from the show of your choice to anyone who stumps me.

I have been throwing myself in 110% at work the past several months, if for no other reason than I am desperate to get a raise, and deeply, recklessly in love with the Democratic Party. I know I keep popping and re-popping on the Internet, and I miss you all tremendously, but am so severiously bugging that I just can't keep up.

I'm out here, I promise, I'm alive and all good and eating green vegetables and whatnot, just with a tremendous singleness of purpose at the moment. Anyway, please don't hate me for being so flaky. And don't, like, feel the need to comment or shower me with whatever it is that people shower in these occasions. I'm not casting about for attention at all, just touching in to say I am racing, racing to keep up, and thus irreliable in the Internet department. But you are my friends, my BEST friends, many of you, and I just wantcha to know I love you, and so forth, and I miss you, for reals, and I'll try and come back real soon but I don't wanna promise anything because I don't wanna disappoint.

< / All About MEEE >

Thank you Julie for the teacherphilia links. Empress A., the truth is I'm attending that particular evening on a DATE, and therefore would prefer to be a twosome. *g*

Home in LA, and the cold's subsiding, though six hours on a plane upgraded me from "nearly better" to a vague "sickish" holding pattern. I need more zinc! Zinc, for the young lady in the raspberry polka-dot shoes!

I'm not ready to whip out my "Grandma Didn't Vote Buchanan!" sign again just yet, but if you ask me if I feel it's beyond this administration to attempt a coup, the answer is, no way in hell. Which is to say, absolutely I feel this administration has so little respect for the American voter that, if it were indeed possible (with the system of checks and balances we have in place), to simply TELL the country that Bush won, some Republicans would not be above doing so. se_parsons and leadensky, I've been following both of your LJs and reading the links you're providing with as much non-partisan perspective as I can muster this week, so, anyway, I hope that higher minds and cooler heads than mine will continue to look into this matter, because I'd really like to know if I'm truly out of step with this country (as the pundits seem to be saying about Democrats) or if there's something more insidious at work.

In related news, Ashcroft resigned. Colin Powell may follow, also Rumsfeld. I feel a bit like Hawkeye and Trapper felt when Frank Burns put in for a transfer -- glad to be getting rid of 'em, but what if we wind up with someone worse?! Hawk and Trap proceeded to spray paint all the rocks by the M*A*S*H creek gold, hoping Frank's greed would keep him around. I haven't yet figured out how to translate that into practical purposes, but at the end of the day, I'm gonna miss Powell when he goes.

*

On the day's agenda, in no particular order, take more Sudafed, eat a chocolate chip cookie, pick up _maayan at the hairdresser, call Shox back, watch M*A*S*H season 4, go to the bar and see my boys after a week of ennui-ish withdrawal, come back to the House for Wayward Uruk-Hai and eat my body weight in bagels.

I'm at the airport, so I need to be careful about statements of sedition because the walls of the wireless internet clearly have eyes and ears.

The Democratic Party (of which I am still firmly and proudly a member) suffered some major blows last night, with almost no victories. We've got Barbara Boxer and Barack Obama and, I dunno, stem cell research funding here in CA. But Daschle is gone, which is gonna be trouble, real trouble in the next administration, as this foundering party looks for a way to galvanize.

The problem is, as it has been, that the Democratic Party is too disparate (nine primary candidates, anyone?), from the "Michael Moore faction" on down to the Hillary in '08-ers, and we had enough trouble uniting behind Kerry. No one united behind Daschle, but without his presence we are seriously a headless beast, and I think over the next four years we're gonna see just how lame-ass this party can be without a force to light the fire under our asses.

So, I'm at the airport, off to NY for a week, and when I come back I'm meeting with Terry New, West Coast Director of the Democratic National Committee, and vying for a gig. Aside from that, I'm still with the lefty fundraisers, and I start my supervisor position in the next couple weeks, raising money and spreading awareness for the likes of EMILY's List, NARAL and a host of liberal watchdog groups.

Bottom line: this whole redneck state debacle simply lets me know that there's more work to be done, that I'll have to struggle just that much harder to fight for the rights and legislations I believe in, and to fight against the inevitable "moral" restructuring that's poised to come from the right.

Oh but DUDE I can't do it right now. Because I'm tired, and grubby from spending the night with Peter Jennings, and I'm at the airport, and I'm headachy, and I'm sad. And the truth is, it's as much our fault as it is anyone else's. The Democratic Party is NOT a cohesive unit. We are NOT a strong enough fighting force, right now. The right is, because at the end of the day, they can all get together behind fucking the queers, cutting down trees and killing brown people of every stripe. It's much easier to unite behind Ward Cleaver than it is to unite behind, I dunno, mischa? Fuck yeah, I'm bitter. Me, today, I just want to crawl under the covers with Peter Jennings, but instead I gotta catch a plane.

Tomorrow's Election Day and the day after tomorrow I'm flying to NY to celebrate my dad's 70th birthday. I'll be gone for a week, leaving the house to the wayward girls until I come back on the 8th to start fundraising for the inevitable recounts.

This city's abuzz with expectation, with rallies that preach to the choir, and it's fucking Christmas Eve in LA as we all rattle around waiting for the polls to open in, oh, eleven hours? There's not much left to do, not much left to say -- tonight was the DNC's pre-emptive pizza party because there's no more fundraising and no one left to call.

Yesterday I set out to find a place to watch the returns come in tomorrow, having a very rigid set of rules for the venue; I needed a place where I could smoke, where I could access the internet, where I'd be in a room of exclusively Kerry voters and a great big TV. The answer, of course, is thassalia's house, so Bron, Maayan, Shox and I are descending there at 8pm and plan on sticking around till T. and M. kick us out or we know who's president, whichever comes first. It's possible we'll be there till January.

Our rockstar lifestyle continues apace, though my energy's flagging as I'm called upon to be social too many nights out of the week, and I'm missing the internet, and with it runpunkrun more than ever. I actually took the night off, bailing on Maayan, Heidi and Chris at the movies to come to the Internet cafe instead, where I got a much-needed virtual hug from wearemany and am now sitting with my toes dangled in the World Wide Web, and, ahhh, the water's fine.

It's 2004 and my daddy's turning *70* -- this, if nothing else, is a reason to celebrate. I'm hoping we've got more reasons than that, but we'll see what's what on T's big-screen TV 24 hours from now. My sister spycookies turns 26 (!!) a couple days later, and we'll celebrate in NYC with the likes of boxmint (and furies? I will e-mail you both with details when I have them) et al on Saturday, and in there we're taking at least one roadtrip up to Northampton to see mom and dad's new house (move-in date's set for Jan. 19th, Inaugurations all around!) and mingle with the local hippies and queers. Mmmm.

Attention also to weaselchopsaw and the LA brigade -- it's sorlklewis's birthday on Wednesday, and I won't be here to show her a good time, so it's on you to party with the Kid till the lights go out in Georgia. Yes?

We had heaps of trick-or-treaters on H-day, three bags of fun-sized candy's worth, but no TP or eggs and no one stole my black cat, so all in all, a decent holiday.

I'll see you tomorrow, after we vote. qowf, I'm still at the same number and I'll be waiting for your call. Hug everyone for me.

I am so fucking cranky about the state of the election. I've been offline and I vaguely remember skimming past some sort of friends-list disclaimers about talking politics on LJ -- is it okay that I don't care? This is my LJ. I do what I please, yo.

We're in week four of my DNC fundraising, and the response I'm getting from good, loyal Democrats (as well as enlightened Republicans, independents and moderates who are simply afraid enough of Bush that they're throwing money at the DNC and changing their votes this year because the alternative is just so SCARY) is, of course, "why is Kerry being such a gigantic pussy?"